eye-dialect

[Buchmann]

More suggestive of West End stage argot ?

Eye dialect reflects OTHER speech patterns which text doesn't capture.

It can also convey irony.

Laurence Horn wrote:

> Another good example is "wuz", as in "We wuz robbed!".  (Try saying
> it in a way that DOESN'T correspond to "wuz".)  A more interesting
> example is "luv", which at one point gave birth to a new lexical item
> and a '60's play and movie of the same name (and spelling) that I
> never saw.  Yes, there's also a pronunciation in parts of Britain in
> which the vowel is back and round rather than a wedge or schwa, but
> that's not what the "luv" spellling represented.  But I'm not sure it
> was simply status- and intelligence-lowering in this case.  More
> register-lowering, perhaps.                larry